Changelog

Boss’s background work is now faster and less expensive

Boss runs a lot of work in the background on your behalf: implementing tickets, sweeping for security issues, running mutation tests, planning, and more. In this release, all of those workflows have been restructured so that heavy, context-heavy steps run in isolated sub-tasks instead of piling up on one long-running thread. The result is that cron runs and automated sweeps consume meaningfully less context per turn, mechanical steps like CI polling and commit stamping are handled by lighter-weight models, and large reference material is loaded on demand rather than loaded every single turn.

None of this changes what Boss does. It changes how efficiently it does it, which matters both for cost and for reliability on long sessions.

Improvements

• Fewer stuck repairs. Fixed a long-standing issue where the repair system could permanently wedge behind a chat session that had died silently at its prompt. Boss now uses its internal session tracker (rather than file timestamps) to decide when a stuck chat can be replaced, so a dead session no longer blocks repair indefinitely. Separately, start refusals (where a new repair is blocked because another is already running) are now counted as “blocked” rather than “failed”, so the failure counter and backoff timer no longer inflate from situations that were not actually failures.
• Faster detection of dead sessions. When a background agent goes idle without finishing, Boss now detects and cleans it up quickly rather than waiting up to 30 minutes to notice.
• Review routing is more reliable. The outcome of an automated code review is now written to a file and read back from there, rather than parsed from the agent’s returned prose. A confused or incomplete summary can no longer cause Boss to route the wrong way after a review.
• Review round limits can be tuned. The maximum number of review rounds Boss runs is now configurable via an environment variable (BS_REVIEW_MAX_ROUNDS), so you can cap it lower for automated or scheduled runs if needed.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a connection error could appear briefly when restarting Boss.
• Fixed an issue where the mutation sweep and debt sweep could fail to parse certain tool output formats correctly, causing them to miss findings.
• Fixed an issue where repair-blocked hints in the UI were displayed the same way as repair failures, making it hard to tell the difference.

boss cron: manage scheduled work from the command line

Boss now has a boss cron command group, so you can view and manage your cron jobs directly from the CLI without switching to the web interface.

Features

• boss-mcp is now available via Homebrew and the curl installer. If you use Boss as an MCP service, you can install and update it the same way you install Boss itself.

• Web pages now have descriptive titles. Browser tabs, bookmarks, and history entries show meaningful names instead of a generic app title.

• Code review gets a second opinion. The bs-review helper now runs a cross-agent review pass in both directions, so more issues are caught before a pull request merges.

Improvements

• Archiving a session no longer loses its status when you navigate away. If you press Escape while a session is being archived, Boss keeps tracking the archive in progress and shows the correct status when you come back.

• Proof videos now include a caption bar. When Boss records a TUI proof video, the agent caption bar is burned into the footage, making it easier to follow what happened during each step.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the setup screen showed a stuck spinner instead of animating during session initialization.
• Fixed an issue where the session screen showed two blank lines above a warning message instead of one.
• Fixed an issue where the setup screen showed a double space before the word “initializing”.

Keyboard navigation in the command launcher

The shortcut launcher in the web app now works with the keyboard. You can arrow up and down through the list of commands and press Enter to run one, without reaching for the mouse.

Improvements

• When Boss automatically verifies that a change works, it now interacts with the relevant part of the page directly rather than doing a generic walkthrough. This makes verifications faster to review and more meaningful.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where running a task in the background could interfere with an active session, causing the run to fail.

Smarter planning, a built-in code reviewer, and a keyboard shortcut launcher

Boss can now plan and implement work in dependency order. When the planner writes a ticket, it checks whether any other in-progress tickets touch the same parts of the codebase. If they do, it links them as blockers in Linear automatically. When picking the next ticket to implement, Boss skips anything blocked by unmerged work and goes straight to the first task that is ready to go. This means less churn from rebase conflicts and fewer wasted cycles on work that would just need to be redone.

A new review step (bs-review) now runs automatically as part of implementation. It looks at the finished changes from multiple angles, including code quality and web output, and leaves review notes before the PR is submitted.

Features

• Keyboard shortcut launcher in the web UI. Press ? to open a searchable list of available shortcuts. You can also browse to them via a trigger in the app header.
• Jump to the Linear ticket from a session. Press l in the session list to open the ticket linked to the selected session directly in Linear.
• Captions on proof videos. When Boss records a proof of its work, the current action is now shown as a caption overlay on the video, in both the web and terminal views. This makes it much easier to follow what Boss was doing at each step.
• New keyboard shortcuts in the web session view. Press n to start a new chat and d to delete a chat without reaching for the mouse.

Improvements

• The setup flow for new users has been cleaned up and is easier to follow.
• Boss now builds your project’s setup scripts using your login shell, which means environment variables and shell configuration are loaded correctly. Fish shell users should see fewer agent startup failures.
• When an agent pane fails to start, Boss shows the exact command that was used, which makes it easier to figure out what went wrong.
• The planning and implementation steps now share an understanding of which tickets are blocked, so the cron scheduler no longer wakes up and finds nothing it can actually start.
• Sessions that finish outside of a scheduled run now correctly advance to their final state instead of staying stuck mid-implementation.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where pressing Esc to exit a session view during archiving would leave the session in a broken state.
• Fixed an issue where pressing Esc during an archive or merge operation could get you stuck and unable to exit.
• Fixed an issue where attaching to a session whose underlying workspace had disappeared would show a confusing “can’t find session” error with no way out.
• Fixed an issue where worktree setup failures would silently swallow the error output, making it hard to know why setup failed. Boss now includes that output in the error message and continues rather than stopping entirely.
• Fixed an issue where running Boss via Homebrew could fail due to shell environment problems.
• Fixed an issue where error rows in the session list were not highlighted clearly when selected.
• Fixed an issue where the scheduled implementation step could occasionally get stuck due to missing tooling context.
• Fixed an issue where rapidly changing session ownership could cause Boss to incorrectly clean up sessions that were still active.

Boss now brings its own tools into every agent session

When you start a coding session, Boss now makes its full set of management tools available to the agent running inside that session. This means the agent can look up session state, read settings, and take actions it previously had to guess at or skip. You do not need to configure anything; it happens automatically for every new session.

This also extends to sessions you run in detached (headless) mode. You can now send follow-up messages to a running detached session and get its status remotely, without needing to be attached to a terminal.

Features

• More MCP tools available in-session. All the fields you can edit in the Boss interface are now also reachable by the agent through MCP tools, so the agent and the UI stay in sync.
• boss env command. Running boss env now prints a self-describing summary of the current environment and what Boss is capable of, useful for debugging or just getting oriented.
• Headless session control. Detached sessions now accept messages and report status remotely. Boss will also refuse to send conflicting instructions while a headless run is already active.

Improvements

• The GitHub and merge buttons in the action bar are now gated on actual PR and check state. The GitHub link updates if a PR number appears mid-session, and the merge button only appears when checks are passing, matching what the backend will actually allow.
• Boss now automatically archives dependabot repair sessions after their pull requests are merged, keeping the session list tidy.
• The changelog you are reading now has a home on the website, updated with each release.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where single-line prompts in scheduled (cron) sessions were pasted but never submitted, causing those sessions to silently do nothing.
• Fixed an issue where the chevron indicator on the session screen could fall out of sync when navigating with the keyboard.
• Fixed an issue where Boss could send a chat message to the wrong session after a restart.
• Fixed an issue where the chat-wait command returned no result if the session was already idle, or if the wait timeout was very short.
• Fixed an issue where plugin verification could fail at startup due to a missing checksum file; the checksum manifest is now built and shipped as part of each release.

Features

• Per-session and per-cron model selection. Choose the model for a session or a scheduled job from a free-text model field on the cron form; the choice threads all the way through to the agent runner.
• boss rename. Rename a session from the CLI, with the same action exposed over MCP.
• Full chat control via MCP, CLI, and the hosted gateway. Manage and steer chats programmatically from any of the three surfaces.
• Clearer cron settings. Repo-settings automation toggles are grouped under an “Automations” heading, with more descriptive save/cancel labels.
• Stronger plugin trust. Plugins are now verified against a signed, SHA-256 manifest and a trusted-path ownership check before they load.

Improvements

• Finalize and repair errors are surfaced directly in the TUI and the web session list, so there is no more digging through logs to find out why a run stopped.
• Session environments are hardened with canonical BOSS_* variables set on every chat, and the session-context prompt is drift-proofed.

Fixes

• Paste now works in every TUI text field.
• The cron list is ordered alphabetically by name.
• Cron finalize is gated on the run actually completing, and stranded runs are recovered when a Stop-hook signal is lost.

Features

• Inline repo configuration. Set a repository’s options right on the add wizard, then open straight into its settings so the add and edit forms stay in sync.
• Agent-suggested titles. Cron finalize proposes meaningful PR and session titles instead of leaving the defaults.
• Honest auto-merge. A clearer auto-merge label plus a per-repository “automatically fix checks” toggle.
• Public security page. The marketing site gains a security page and footer link.

Improvements

• Repo automation toggles are aligned across the add and edit screens.
• A new bs-sweep-plan cron skill for scheduled planning work.

Fixes

• A successful repo add now routes to settings even if a background refresh fails.
• Stranded cron runs (logless or with a dead agent) are reliably reaped, and pausing a session now halts all repair, not just failing checks.

Features

• Steady-state reconciliation. The daemon continuously reconciles its read model to prevent phantom sessions from appearing.
• “Automate your environment” section. The homepage explains per-repo setup scripts so new users understand environment automation at a glance.

Fixes

• The cron form keeps its save action visible while you scroll.
• Each daemon derives a stable identity from a persisted machine UUID, making session ownership more reliable across restarts.

Features

• TUI agent mode for proof. A new stdio bridge lets the proof tooling drive the terminal UI to capture evidence of TUI changes.
• Video post-processing for terminal recordings. Proof now post-processes TUI videos for clearer playback.
• Automatic format-on-commit. A husky pre-commit hook formats staged files so commits stay consistent.

Fixes

• Cron sessions with no GitHub origin are cleaned up automatically.
• Read-model sessions are correctly scoped to live sessions.

Features

• bs-security-sweep skill. A read-only dry-run mode for surfacing security findings, plus a write path that proposes a fix, opens a PR, and watches the repair flow.
• Cross-run cap. The sweep limits how much it changes across runs so automated work stays reviewable.

Fixes

• Cron “no change” outcomes now correctly publish their session deletes.